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We just bought a Kindle 2 eBook Reader

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Wow, my wife just bought a Kindle 2 eBook Reader! She bought it on line through Amazon. It’s a 6 inch screen and comes with some really neat stuff. I never really thought that we’d pick up something like this, but we did.

kindle 2 eBook reader

It comes with dictionary, text only web browser (this is in the US only damn it!), and a wireless 3G device. Our new Kindle 2 is slim at just over 1/3 of an inch, which is as thin as most magazines. The device is light weighting in at 10.2 ounces, lighter than your average paperback.

The Kindle looks quite paper like in it’s display without the glare that you sometimes get in some devices, even in bright sunlight. I wonder if you can adjust the brightness of the screen itself. Our notebook screen is not all that bright in the sunlight which pisses me off when I’m in the backyard trying to do some work. They claim the battery life on the Kindle is very long, up to 1 week on a single charge. It carries up to 1,500 books. You can find a fair amount of free books at Amazon and other book stores online. We’ve already downloaded some onto our notebook to be uploaded to our new Kindle when it arrives.

Read-to-Me is a neat feature my wife told me about. With it’s experimental Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books out loud to you, unless the book’s rights holder/owner made this feature unavailable. Perfect for after more then a few light refreshing liquid beverages, ha!

She bought a electrical wall mount charger, car charger, ear phones and last, but not least the Amazon leather cover. I’m forever scratching electronic screens, I should take a pic of my phone so you can see what I mean, so this will come in very handy.

The only bad thing about buying it here in Canada is the custom and duty taxes $33 (CAN) that comes with it, but hey, no use complaining too much. We should be getting out little hands on it this Wednesday, so sometime after that expect another post about our new addition to our home!

Do you have a Kindle? How do you like it?

Keep on Kindlin’!




The PATH in Toronto

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I was downtown the other day and we ran into the hidden gem for all tourists to use in the winter time. We haven’t used this way for years and I just wanted to share it with you all.

Like most cities that have cold/snowy weather during the winter, you have to deal with the slush and snow while traversing through the core. This really can put a damper on your experience here. So in the early 1900’s our forefathers came up with this fairly new concept on building a underground city to keep you spirits warm and dry. I know that this sounds like some bad sci-fi movie idea, but it works great!

It started out around the landmark Eaton Centre then other locations started to jump on board with this fabulous idea. Then a 1988 reform in city council decided to scale back this idea. After this, developers had to give way to their tenants cries to have their locations attached to this revolutionary way of shopping. This gave way to the rise in land value of the property making the developers owners of the most valuable pieces of property in the country.

According to Guinness World Records, PATH is the largest underground shopping complex in the world with 371,600 square metres (27 km.)of retail space. The PATH also holds the bragging rights to the worlds largest side walk sale! It’s even bigger then the whole size of the West Edmonton Mall. If you’ve ever been there then you get the idea. Soon, they say, it will cover around 60 kilometers underneath the downtown area.

If you ever come to Toronto for a visit, check out the official PATH site and print out a copy, it’ll be one of the best things you did if you come here!

Keep on Jammin’

The Guitar Resource

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Just like every other guitar player on the planet, you realize that there is always someone out there that knows more then you do. You may spend your time, like I do, by searching, and then figuring out different styles to play that will help develop a unique sound that you can call your own. This does take a long time. Or, you can search the web for sites that can dramatically speed up this process.

Some great guitar sites even expose you to different ways to listen and understand overall musical structures. Well, I think that I have found one that does all the above and then some. The site is called The Guitar Resource. This is like one stop shopping for technique!

The Guitar Resource has an article called Circle of Fifths that will help with everything from finger exercises all the way to chords and chord progressions.

Not only does the Guitar Resource provide information on how to play, but it has a great selection called How to Read Tabs that compliment and makes the site that much more informative.

The videos that he makes about his topics are top shelf! He has the uncanny ability to make you feel relaxed and he doesn’t talk down to you. His posts also make you sit down and think about what and how to achieve all this without all that dry musical theory stuff. It gives you the very basics and lets you go from there. If you want more detailed info, then just ask him. It’s just that simple.

The tools provided at The Guitar Resource are simple and straight to the point. You don’t need all the bells and whistles to achieve your goal, and I think that he has that aspect all sowed up since he started in March 12th, 2007.

I also found a fabulous book in the portion of his site called Recommended. The book is called the “Practical Theory for Guitar”. Yes it certainly is a must have for any guitarist regardless of his/her level. I looked at some articles and found it simple and straight to the point, so I’m seriously thinking of buying it! I have to hand it to this fellow, he certainly got it right on this one too.

If you visit the guitar resource be sure to check out the tabs that you will find across the top of the site. He has a section called The Store. Within the store you will find a featured product as well as a selection of categories such as Guitars, Amps, Strings, concert shop, guitar instruction, parts and accessories and whole lot more.

All and all, as the name says, The Guitar Resource it is a great resource site to fit all aspects of your guitar playing needs.

Keep on Jammin’

Save on international calls

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If you tend to make long distance calls from home or even from your mobile phone you might be interested in getting some cheap prepaid calling cards online from a company called Pingo.

Pingo has particularly good rates for cell phone users. Looking at the rates it’s actually much cheaper to use a Pingo calling card than to simply dial a long distance call using your cell phone provider. You can save up to 90% on your long distance mobile calls.

We don’t even like to get long distance calls on our cell phone because of the roaming charges. Our cell phone provider seems to charge us for everything and we can’t do much about it since we still have a contract with them. Now that I know how much cheaper it is to use a Pingo calling card for my cell phone long distance calls I think I’ll give it a try. Really, the rates are very good. See the rates in the links I’ve just listed to see what I mean.

Another bonus, when you sign up with Pingo you’ll get up to four hours worth of free international calls.

We don’t make a lot of long distance calls. I’d say that most of our long distance calls these days are to the United States. United States calling card rates are quite low. 1.8 cents per minute seems to be the going rate, and that’s quite a contrast to the 20 cents per minute that we pay when we call using our home telephone line through our telephone company.

Check it out for yourself. I’m sure you’ll save some money.

TestFreaks reviews Television brands and models

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A couple of years ago, the wife and I, decided to get a new TV. Well it wasn’t so much as decided to get a new TV, our Sony was dying! We’d turn it on and it would take 15 to 30 minutes to warm up and show us what was on the television screen. We thought about getting it fixed, but getting it fixed would cost about the same amount as buying a brand new regular TV of the same size. That’s when we decided to not only get a new TV, but to get one that was HDTV ready.

I only wish that I’d discovered the Testfreaks.com website before we went hunting for a new television. The TestFreaks site has LCD and Plasma TV articles. Reading the articles of the various television brands and models would have made picking out a new TV so much easier since it has so many TV ratings.

Well, I’ve found the site now, and I’m bookmarking it. When we get around to renovating our basement the DLP TV that we did end up purchasing may get moved to the basement, or we might end up getting another new TV for either the living room or renovated basement. The TestFreaks site will come in handy the next time I’m doing research on the different types of televisions and brands.

If you’re shopping for a new television set be sure to look at the articles on TestFreaks before you make your final decision.

Coupon deals on Music CDs and DVDs

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I guess I’m in a surfing the net, browsing around kind of mood today. Like most people I enjoy getting a deal on things. That’s why I’ve started to browse through the more than 1000 online stores that are listed at CouponChief. All the stores listed are well known stores, many of which have physical locations as well as online presences.

I decided to visit CouponChief today to see if they had any coupons or coupon codes for music stores. I’ve been looking to expand our music CD and DVD collection and I might as well save some money by using a coupon to get a percentage of the price right?

I discovered that they have a Music and DVD section where they list all the deals they have for their online music stores. I found a great deal using Tower Record coupon codes to get free shipping on orders of $20 or more.

I also discovered that they have listings for deals on MP3 players, iPod accessories, DVD players and other music and entertainment related items at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sony. See, I told you they have listings for well known stores.

Sale on Sunglasses and eyewear at OpticsPlanet

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You know how there’s retail stores that you go to just because you like the products they sell. Perhaps just browsing the aisles looking at neat things? Well I found an online store that’s just like that too. It’s called Opticsplanet and they carry the most interesting things.

Opticsplanet.net carries everything from Sun glasses to microscopes, telescopes, binoculars and flashlights and whole lot of other products in between.

When I was visiting the site today I noticed that they had a huge selection of sunglasses. Actually it’s not just sunglasses, but a whole range of eyewear from prescription eyewear, to ski and motorcycle goggles.

I used to have a real problem. I always seemed to lose my sunglasses. I’m not so bad these days, but I could use an extra pair, since I still somehow misplace mine from time to time. An extra pair or two would solve that problem wouldn’t it?

They have a huge selection of brand name and top brand eyewear. Their selection includes eyewear from Bolle, Body Specs, Bobster, Wiley X, ESS, Revision Eyewear and many more manufacturers. Personally, I really like the design of Serengeti sunglasses. The prices are really good too. The lowest that I’ve found actually. I just discovered that pretty much all of the eyewear that Opticsplanet sells is on sale right now, so that makes the prices even better.

What great timing on my part to have browsed the site when they are having a sale eh? If you need sunglasses, goggles or any kind of eyewear from designer to safety or shooting glasses now is the time to visit OpticsPlanet.

They also offer free UPS delivery on all orders over $29.95, and they guarantee the lowest prices. That’s why I love OpticsPlanet. Great stuff, great prices, and free shipping if your purchase is just $29.95? You can’t lose. Check it out for yourself.

Use the PaidByCash card online just like a credit card

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Don’t have a credit card, but want to purchase services or products online? Now you can with the new PaidByCash virtual Mastercard.

For the longest time we didn’t have a credit card. We’d misused ours in the past and had poor credit from being behind in payments. When our credit was finally ok again we still didn’t rush to get a credit card because we were afraid we’d fall into the trap of using it for things we didn’t have the money to pay for on our own.

As a result of this we missed out on opportunities to purchase items online at lower prices than in retail stores, and we couldn’t sign up for various internet related services like online games easily either. Now we have a credit card, but I still like the idea of a Virtual Mastercard as I can pay for items online right away with cash that I’ve already deposited into the cards account.

That’s right. With the new PaidbyCash service you can add money to your account and use the card online just like you would a credit card. The only major difference is, as I said, that you are paying for your purchases right away rather than on credit because you are using cash that you already put into the card.

This service will come in handy for those that like to play online games but couldn’t in the past because of a lack of credit card, and for those that want to purchase items at lower online prices too.

The PaidByCash card is accepted by pretty much every internet retailer, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll only be able to use it in a few places.

Check it out for yourself and see if you think this is great idea too.

Handmade carpet sale at Tufenkian

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When I first moved to Toronto from my hometown of Brantford it was to go to college in order to become a jeweler. Yes, I did graduate and was a jeweler for several years before changing careers.

I lived in “co-op” with several other students. In other words I rented a room in a boarding house set up by the college for it’s students. Man that was a party house. But I digress.

I won’t go into the details of how I ended up having a beautiful Persian carpet since it’s a long story, but I did, and it was one of the only real design features of my room while I lived in the boarding house. Later when I moved in with my girlfriend, who soon became my wife, the carpet came with me.

Unfortunately the carpet went through a lot of wear and tear over the years – mostly in that old boarding house I lived in, and when my wife and I moved to the house we now own we got rid of the carpet.

Now I’m looking at the handmade Tibetan and Armenian carpets at Tufenkian. I see that there is a Los Angeles, New York City and Scottsdale Arizona Carpet Sales. It’s Tufenkian’s semi-annual rug sale.

The quality of their hand made carpets is superb, and I’m seriously considering ordering a new rug online. I really miss our old carpet and my wife liked it too. I also found out that if we register online at the site we can get an additional 10% off. That sounds like a pretty good deal – a sale and a discount on top of that just for registering.

Hmmm I think I’d better start to seriously look at these carpet designs.

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